Principal
Chad is founding principal of Community Lab School—a nationally recognized R&D school model in Albemarle County Public Schools—and lecturer at the University of Virginia, teaching courses in educational innovation and social entrepreneurship. He is co-author of Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools and was named one of the "20 to Watch" educational leaders in the country by the National School Boards Association. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, Forbes, Education Week, and several books.
Since 2017, Chad has led Community Lab School's transformation from two underperforming programs into an award-winning model serving grades 6-12, earning Virginia's Highest Achievement Exemplar Award for two consecutive years and recognition as one of Virginia's Top High Schools by U.S. News & World Report. The school has partnered with researchers from UVA, MIT, Stanford, and others to design and pilot innovative educational strategies to inform public schooling practices more broadly.
He has been invited to give keynote addresses for the Singapore Ministry of Education and the National Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education, participated in multiple White House education innovation events during the Obama administration—including Champions of Change and the NextGen High School Summit—and testified before the Virginia General Assembly on education policy. He has also led workshops for the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, American Association of School Superintendents, and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on innovation in K-12 education.
Prior to his current role as Director of Innovation and Instruction for Albemarle County Public Schools, Chad oversaw district-wide K-12 innovation initiatives, secondary programming, STEM/CTE and entrepreneurship pathways, and two charter schools while directing a $3.5 million U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) grant focused on advanced manufacturing and engineering design with UVA, Princeton, and the Smithsonian. He began his career as an alternative education teacher's aide, classroom teacher, and wrestling coach, earning recognition as a three-time Most Influential Educator and seven-time Wrestling Coach of the Year.
He has taught entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship at Piedmont Virginia Community College and organized multiple Startup Weekend events in Charlottesville. Chad has received numerous honors including appointments to the inaugural Virginia Governor's Council on Youth Entrepreneurship, a Virginia Board of Education advisory committee, and recognition in Albemarle Magazine's "10 Changemakers for 2025," and Blue Ridge Business Journal's Top 20 Under 40 award issues. He has founded and supported several ventures with a social impact focus and served on boards including the Virginia Career Education Foundation, Charlottesville Business Innovation Council (CBIC), and the Edgar and Eleanor Shannon Foundation for Excellence in Education.
Chad is currently a doctoral student at the University of Virginia and was the 2025 recipient of the Walter Eugene Campbell Scholarship Award for Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. He also holds an M.Ed. from UVA, an MBA from Virginia Tech, and a B.S. from Old Dominion University. He is an alumnus of the UVA Darden School of Business's Executive Educators Leadership Institute and the Center for Nonprofit Excellence Board Development Academy. In his spare time, he enjoys advising early-stage social ventures focused on educational impact, traveling with his family, and fly fishing for brook trout in the Blue Ridge Mountains.